French protests to focus on children and police bill

• AFP, PARIS
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France was yesterday to face more rallies, with demonstrators venting frustrations ranging from inflation to opposition to a new police bill at the latest protests.

The country has been gripped by high-school blockades and cost-of-living demonstrations for more than a month, ahead of presidential elections next year that the far right sees as its best chance of seizing power.

Some of the largely peaceful rallies have seen fringe violence, as well as accusations of police brutality.

A protester with a cloth covering their eyes sits at the base of the Statue de la Republique at the Place de la Republique in Paris yesterday.

Photo: Reuters

People were to take to the streets for the fifth Saturday in a row, with a main rally in Paris and dozens of other protests across the country.

In the capital, the Yellow Vest movement were to join high-school students, unions and other activists fighting for children’s rights or opposed a bill to give police who use their weapons a presumption of legitimate self-defense.

“Society’s in bad shape,” said Claire Bourdille, from a collective battling violence against children and teenagers. “We can’t focus on one cause more than another.”

Backers of the police-related bill, including the far-right National Rally party of presidential hopeful Marine Le Pen, said it is necessary to avoid police being automatically suspected of using disproportionate force.

Activists said the bill, approved by the lower house and soon to go to the French Senate, amounts to a “license to kill.”

It would make holding security forces accountable even harder in a country where most cases of alleged police brutality rarely reach a criminal court, they said.

Lawyers last week denounced alleged police violence at protests that led to “mutilations” including hand, foot and eye injuries.

Karl Ghazi of the CGT union said yesterday’s protest in Paris might be different with “real activist fatigue” after a month and a half of protests.

“It’ll essentially be child rights activists on one side and people against the ‘license to kill’ on the other,” he said.

About 146,000 people took part in demonstrations across France on Saturday last week, authorities said, far lower numbers than on previous weekends.